Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Data loss is catastrophic for any business. TrueList’s data loss statistics point out that “almost 70% of small businesses close within a year of a large data loss.” One of the most effective ways to prevent loss is to backup data. There are multiple data backup solutions available, and one of the newest options is known as chain-free backup.

You’d be hard pressed to find a managed services provider (MSP) who doesn’t work with remote access protocols on a regular basis. That said, not all remote access methods are equal, and choosing the right protocol is essential in providing the best service to your clients.

The trend toward hybrid work environments has forced businesses to think about how to protect their organizations from increased use of “bring your own device” (BYOD) endpoints and other new devices. This is no small challenge, as MSPs know. The rise of the remote worker presents once of the biggest changes to the overall cybersecurity landscape that we’ve ever encountered.

In my last blog I took a look at some of what I see as the most obvious signs that your MSP business might have outgrown its RMM. These included: In this blog, I’m going to turn my attention to looking at some of the less obvious signs to reconsider your RMM.

IoT devices are exponentially growing in number each year, with an anticipated 14.4 billion IoT devices by the end of 2023 up to 27 billion IoT devices by the year 2025. The accelerated growth can be attributed to a variety of positive effects like increased efficiency, productivity, and convenience. However, in order to gain these benefits, these IoT devices need to be managed effectively.

The last day of support for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012/R2 is set for October 10, 2023. Microsoft announced, “After this date, these products will no longer receive security updates, non-security updates, bug fixes, technical support, or online technical content updates.” Recently, Windows 7/8/8.1 also reached their end of support. Without continual support from Microsoft, the software becomes less secure and more risky, so they end the life of the product.

The cloud has fundamentally changed how organizations work with technology. The days of an on-prem infrastructure and endpoints with a physical data center are starting to be seen in the rearview mirror by many businesses, and now nearly half of all corporate data is stored in the cloud. There are multiple factors that have caused this change and increased the transition to the cloud, but one of the main supporting factors that makes this possible is the use of managed cloud services.

Data is the currency of today’s digital age. It’s what is most valued by companies, consumers, and (unfortunately) threat actors. Because of this, protecting both organizational and personal data is top priority. It’s also key to remember that data is important, wherever it is. The locations data is stored, like endpoints and servers, differ in the type and amount of data they store.

The bulk of networked devices are now wireless. Most Wi-Fi manufacturers now offer some form of Wi-Fi monitoring, including cloud-based solutions, and often have great dashboards that require no setup at all. But if you don’t know it’s there, or how to take advantage of it, is it really any help? This quick guide is designed to help your team with best practices when it comes to Wi-Fi monitoring: how to understand and make the most of what is available to you.

When thinking about your strategy around backups, recovery, availability, and business continuity, one part of the plan tends to fall by the wayside: backup retention. We focus so much on things like recovery objectives, SLAs, and tiers of data, that our thinking revolves around the need to potentially recover the backup that we just made a matter of minutes afterward. But there are data sets that need to be available weeks, months—even years—after they are made.